Blizzard's original death knight concept was that of an undead spellcaster unit which made its initial appearance in Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness.[1] This death knight could be more accurately described as a horseback-mounted lich rather than the traditional undead warrior. Years later, Blizzard introduced a new death knight hero unit in Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, and this second rendition was revised to reflect the general characteristics of the more traditional death knight design.[2] To understand the key differences between these two different generations of death knight, see the "Lore" section located further down this page. The death knight was later adapted as a prestige class within the Warcraft RPG and they were former paladin warriors.A&HC 24 It is the Warcraft III version of the death knight that became the first hero class in World of Warcraft and was introduced in the World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King expansion.

Talents

Death knight talents are split into 3 trees; originally each of them were fully capable of supporting either a tanking or DPS melee role, however that is no longer the case over time with the release of class changes in patches and the release of . Though Blood is the dedicated tanking tree, any of the three talent trees can effectively tank anything under heroics as long as one stays in Blood Presence.

Blood: Tanking Tree. This tree primarily amplifies the death knight's melee spells, weapons, healing, and abilities. It also has a prominent health-regeneration theme, with abilities and talents such as Improved Death Strike, Blood Parasite, Vampiric Blood, Rune Tap, and the Mastery: Blood Shield. Blood players will wield 2H weapons, and tanking is done using Blood Presence for its damage reduction, stamina boost, quick melee health regen and threat generation boost. Blood is also widely considered to be the new leveling spec for Death Knights.

Frost: DPS Tree. This tree has many control elements, a strong critical-strike/bonus-damage theme, and also several talents that improve physical-damage output, including Brittle Bones and Improved Icy Talons. Frost players can choose between dual-wielding or using a 2H; dual-wielding will provide 10% more DPS than 2H, however. Damage is done in either Frost Presence (dual-wielders) or Unholy Presence (2H users). Most of the Frost tree's damage comes from Obliterate (with Killing Machine procs), Melee strikes, Frost Strike, and Howling Blast (for AoE fights).

Unholy: DPS/PvP Tree. This tree has a heavy focus on diseases and related abilities, as well as improving summoned minions with the passive talent Master of Ghouls. The Unholy tree also provides AoE damage, spell damage shielding, and mobility-improvement sub-themes. Unholy users may also choose between dual wielding (which requires some Frost talents) and using a 2H. Damage is done using Unholy presence, and most of the Unholy tree's damage comes from the summoned Ghoul, Death Coil, Melee strikes, and Scourge Strike.

Lore

Death knight is a name shared by several organizations of powerful necromancers. These orders share a few things in common, including riding horses with horned skulls and many of the same abilities. Playable death knights, however, are specifically death knights of the Scourge.

Immortal Soldiers of the Horde

The original death knights were created for Orgrim Doomhammer by Gul'dan as powerful soldiers of the Horde. These death knights were created by placing the souls of the slain warlocks of the Shadow Council into the corpses of fallen Stormwind knights, the first of whom was Teron Gorefiend. Unlike modern death knights of the Scourge, these ghoulish fiends were not battle hardened warriors; they were insidious necromancers who possessed superior intellect and tremendous magical power. They often favored the use of terror tactics and reanimated the corpses of enemy soldiers who fell in battle to serve them as mindless undead minions.

Champions of the Lich King

Years after the destruction of Draenor, the immensely powerful Lich King created a new breed of death knights: malevolent, rune-wielding warriors of the Scourge. The first and greatest of these was the Lich King's chosen champion, Prince Arthas Menethil, once a mighty paladin of the Silver Hand, who sacrificed his soul to claim the runeblade Frostmourne in a desperate bid to save his people. The rest are primarily made up of other fallen paladins whose souls were twisted and bound to the will of the Frozen Throne[2].

Unlike Gul'dan's death knights, these dark champions possess unholy strength; however, they do not possess free will and their minds are inexorably entwined with and dominated by the Lich King's vast consciousness. Despite the potential loss of free will, some powerful mortals are intrigued by the promise of immortality and pledge their souls freely into the Lich King's service to achieve it. (Baron Rivendare is an example of this).

In the years since Arthas shattered the Frozen Throne and merged with the Lich King, the power and fury of the death knights has only grown. Now these unrelenting crusaders of the damned eagerly await the Lich King's command to unleash their fury on Azeroth once again. Unlike death knights of the Old Horde, the Scourge's death knights are not limited to their use of ranged spell casting abilities. In addition, these tireless death knights are considerably stronger, faster, and more agile than they were in life. However, both generations are equally destructive and terrifying to engage in the field of battle.[3]

The Knights of the Ebon Blade is a faction consisting of the renegade death knights that broke free of the Lich King's control after the battle of Light's Hope Chapel (in other words, player-created death knights). Led by Highlord Darion Mograine, the Knights of the Ebon Blade have allied themselves with the Alliance and the Horde with the help of Highlord Tirion Fordring of the Knights of the Silver Hand, and have pledged to do their part in defeating their former master, the Lich King. Their main base is Acherus: The Ebon Hold, taken from the Scourge after breaking free. It should be noted that the Knights of the Ebon Blade are not a separate player faction such as the Alliance and Horde. For the purposes of gameplay, player-created death knights still belong to either the Alliance or Horde depending on their race/faction.

Ebon Blade

Shadowfang keep

Hero Class Overview

Death knights in Wrath of the Lich King are a new class mirroring their previous incarnations. While boasting powerful melee abilities, as well as plate armor, these warriors supplement their strength with dark magic. Calling upon a rune system of magic, the death knight may summon unholy, blood, and frost spells. The criterion for creating a death knight is the existence of a level 55+ character on the player's account on any realm[4].

Unlocking your death knight

The death knight is the first hero class in World of Warcraft. The death knight will start at level 55 in Acherus: The Ebon Hold over the Eastern Plaguelands, with multiple spells and abilities ready to use, and a set of uncommon gear. When you leave Ebon Hold, you will have a full set of rare gear ready for Outland. Through the death knight-specific quests in this necropolis and the surrounding areas, the character learns to master the power of the death knight and learns to use this new power for the will of the Lich King. Quests will take them outside the necropolis and into an area within the Scarlet Enclave.

Players can create one death knight per realm, so long as they have a level 55 character already and the Wrath of the Lich King on their account. Currently the Pandaren cannot become death knights.

The Rune System

Runes as shown at BlizzCon 2007 (outdated).

Early beta frame removed due to pet difficulties (outdated).

The final frame art used since WotLK public release.

The death knight uses a unique rune-based resource system to govern his/her spells and abilities. Three rune types exist: blood, frost, and unholy, each with an attached color and symbol. Using certain abilities exhausts one or more runes, starting a cooldown of 10 seconds. After the cooldown, the runes refresh. The death knight can use spells to turn a rune into a Death Rune, which can be used as a blood, frost, or unholy rune. In addition, whenever the death knight uses a rune ability against a foe, it builds up a certain amount of Runic Power. This Runic Power is only used by few abilities.[5] All abilities that use Runic Power use a set amount, like Death Coil. Death knights cannot reallocate the number and type of runes - they are fixed to two runes of each type.[6]

The original player frame for death knights shown at BlizzCon was changed as feedback showed it was not ideal for displaying rune power for players.

Runeforging is a profession available only to death knights, providing permanent weapon enchants. The enchants work just like the permanent weapon enchants provided by Enchanting, but are self-only and are designed specifically to benefit death knight class. These are independent of the rune resource system.

Character's Role

In general, the death knight can be considered a hybrid melee class that combines damage dealing and tanking, somewhat akin to Warriors. They wear plate armor and are able to dual-wield or use two-handed blade weapons (and maces, as revealed later). Like druids, they tank without shields. Their tanking mechanics involve high armor and a high chance to parry.[7] Death knights tanks depend on a combination of high damage abilities, in addition to high threat abilities, such as Death and Decay and Rune Strike, to generate and hold aggro.

Like every other class, the death knight has three different talent trees that enhance certain aspects of his or her specialties. However, the differences between the trees are not as clear-cut as those of other classes, both for PvP and PvE environments. Notably, death knights can tank or deal damage regardless in which talent tree they specialize, although a careful talent selection is still required to bolster their preferred role. In patch 4.0.1, the trees became more defined, with Blood becoming the Tank specialization tree, and the others being DPS.

Blood enhances the death knight's melee abilities and damage and vastly improves the ability to heal itself. As the name suggests, the special abilities it grants through talents are based on the Blood Runes. Blood also provides healing utility to party and raids and has some very useful buffs and debuffs that the death knight can cast on others, such as Unholy Frenzy and Blood Shield Mastery, as well as providing a raid-wide 10% attack power buff (Abomination's Might). Blood is considered the tree for soloing and should be given a thought when it comes time to level your Death Knight. Many 80-85 dks suggest to start as unholy and then switch to your blood spec depending on what suits you best.

Frost enhances melee abilities and focuses on increasing both AoE and single target damage. It provides some very powerful direct damage abilities like Frost Strike and Howling Blast. Parties and Raids also benefit from this talent tree by gaining a 20% melee attack speed haste (Improved Icy Talons).

Unholy enhances the death knight's diseases and damage over time spells, making them effective at AoEDPS. It also provides the death knight with a ghoul who is a permanent pet, a gargoyle guardian he or she can summon, and stronger diseases. Raid and party utility is granted by a 13% increased magic damage debuff Ebon Plaguebringer.

Runeforging

Runeforging allows the death knight to permanently enchant their weapon with enchants that are typically more powerful than enchants available to other classes. Death Knights can wear Relics in their ranged slot, but Relics are not enchant-able.

A weapon can have an enchant from either runeforging or from Enchanting, but not both together (the runeforging enchants are always better for the death knight). A player will have to be near a runeforge in order to forge a rune onto their weapon. Once a weapon has been engraved with a rune it is impossible for the rune to be removed, though it can be changed at a runeforge. Also even if it is not soulbound, once a weapon has been engraved with a rune it is impossible for that weapon to be traded.

Races

The death knight class can be played by the following races, with the following stats:

Sortable table

Race

Strength

Agility

Stamina

Intellect

Spirit

Armor

Health**

New Health

109

70

99

29

44*

140

2169

2939

113*

69

100*

28

41

138

2179

2979*

103

75

99

33*

42

159

2169

2939

108

73

99

29

43

146

2169

2949

104

77*

99

29

42

154

2169

2939

111

75

99

25

41

0

2169

2949

105

75*

99

32*

40

150

2169

2929

107

71

99

27

47*

142

2169

2959

105

75*

99

32*

40

0

2169

2949

111

70

100*

26

44

140

2179

2969

113*

69

100*

25

44

138

2246

3117***

109

75*

99

25

43

150

2169

2959

Cataclysm changes

Tanking as blood

Death Knights will tank as Blood in Cataclysm | 2010-04-06 21:45 |Ghostcrawler

We're doing our Cataclysm preview on the death knight changes later this week, but we knew one change risked overshadowing all the others, so we figured we'd go ahead and drop the proverbial Blood bomb today.

In Cataclysm, death knights will have a dedicated tanking tree, much like the other three tank classes. That tree will be Blood.

We’ll go into more detail in the upcoming preview, but we wanted to take the opportunity to explain the reasoning for such a big change.

Why the about face? We actually thought the “tri tank” experiment worked out okay. We suspected there would always be a “best” tanking tree, because that’s the way these things shake out, but we hoped it would be close enough that many players could tank with their favorite tree. When we tried out this design for Wrath of the Lich King, we were using it as a test case to see if we wanted to do similar things with the warrior and paladin talent trees.

A lot has happened since that time. We introduced the dual-spec feature, allowing players to have a tanking spec and dps spec that they could switch between. We introduced Dungeon Finder, which makes it easier to find players who want to tank, and even let players level up using a dedicated tank spec. In Cataclysm, we are introducing the concept of passive talent tree bonuses and we think that feature is a lot stronger when the talent tree has a particular focus (such as damage, tanking or healing). For example, it’s safer to give more passive damage to a tanking tree than we can a dps tree. Above all, we were just spending a lot of effort trying to balance three trees (though it was really six trees, since each tree was trying to do two things).

It started to feel unfair to the other tank classes that we had to spend so much effort tweaking three types of DK tanks, and it even started to feel unfair to the DK that we couldn’t focus their tanking experience. One bit of feedback that really struck home was the DK players who said, essentially, “I look at the Protection tree and I’m jealous of all of the cool tools they have to help their tanking. As a DK, I have to pick and choose tanking talents from within a sea of dps talents.” Rather than have a strong focus, the trees felt a little watered down because they were trying to do so much. With Frost as a dual-wield, spell and runic power focused tree, Unholy as a disease and minion focused tree, and Blood as a self-healing, defensive cooldown, tanking tree, we think the focus of each tree is a lot clearer and cooler.

In Cataclysm, Blood will be the death knight version of a Protection tree. It will have passive talent tree bonuses that reflect tanking. It will have tools, such as a Demo Shout equivalent, necessary for tanking. Several of the more fun tanking talents from Frost and Unholy will be moved into Blood. We will be able to revise (or even remove) clunky mechanics like Rune Strike and focus on letting DKs generate threat with their normal Blood tanking rotation.

This is major change, and we understand it will be met with some disappointment from players who really liked the flexibility, those who appreciated the unorthodox talent tree design, or those few of you who really liked Blood dps. Nevertheless, we are convinced that this is the right change for the game.

General preview

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will bring with it several changes to class talents and abilities. In this preview, you'll get a glimpse at some of the new abilities, spells, and talents in store for the death knight class, along with an early look at some improvements we plan to make to the rune resource system.

New Death Knight Abilities

Outbreak infects the target with both [Frost Fever] and [Blood Plague] at no rune cost. This ability allows death knights to apply diseases quickly when they are switching targets or when their diseases have been dispelled.

Necrotic Strike is a new attack that deals weapon damage and applies a debuff that absorbs an amount of healing based on the damage done. For context, imagine that the death knight can choose between doing 8,000 damage outright with a certain ability, or dealing 6,000 damage and absorbing 4,000 points in incoming heals with Necrotic Strike -- the burst is smaller, but a larger overall amount of healing would be required to bring the target back to full health.

This ability is meant to bring back some of the old flavor from when death knights could dispel heal-over-time (HoT) effects. It also gives the class a bit more PvP utility without simply replicating a Mortal Strike-style effect.

The death knight strikes a target, applying a debuff that allows the death knight to copy the opponent's next spell cast and unleash it. Unlike [Spell Reflection], Dark Simulacrum does not cancel the incoming spell. In general, if you can't reflect an ability, you won't be able to copy it either.

Rune System Changes

While we're satisfied with the way the rune system works overall, we're making a few major changes to the mechanics that will ultimately help death knight players feel less constrained. Here's the rationale behind the changes, followed by an explanation of how the new system will work.

In the current rune system, any time a rune is sitting idle, death knights are losing out on potential damage output. By comparison, rogues spend most of their time at low energy levels, and if they're unable to use their skills for a few seconds, that energy builds up and can be spent later, minimizing the net loss from the interruption.

A death knight's runes, on the other hand, cannot be used until they are fully active. If a death knight ever goes more than a few seconds without spending an available rune, that resource is essentially wasted. Because the death knight is pushing buttons constantly, it can be difficult to add new mechanics to the class because the player doesn't have any free global cooldowns to use them. We can't grant extra resources or reduced cost, because there is no time to spend them. Missing an attack is devastating, and it's impossible to save resources for when they're most useful.

Additionally, each individual death knight ability has a fairly low impact on its own, making it feel like most of the death knight's attacks are weak. The death knight's rotations are also more easily affected by latency or a player's timing being just a little off. At times, it feels like death knights aren't able to take advantage of their unique resource mechanic, which can diminish the fun.

The new rune system will change how runes regenerate, from filling simultaneously to filling sequentially. For example, if you use two Blood runes, then the first rune will fill up before the second one starts to fill up. Essentially, you have three sets of runes filling every 10 seconds instead of six individual runes filling every 10 seconds. (Haste will cause runes to fill faster.) Another way to think of this is having three runes that go up to 200% each (allowing extra "storage"), rather than six runes that go up to 100% each.

As this is a major change to the death knight's mechanics, it will of course require us to retune many of the class's current abilities. For example, each ability needs to hit harder or otherwise be more meaningful since the death knight is getting fewer resources per unit of time. Some abilities will need to have their costs reduced as a result.

Talent Changes

Next we'll outline some of the death knight talent-tree changes we're planning in Cataclysm. This list is by no means comprehensive, but it should give you a sense of how we're intending each death knight spec to perform.

One of the biggest changes we're making is converting Blood into a dedicated tanking tree. While we feel that having three tanking trees was successful overall, it's less necessary in a world with dual-specialization. In addition, the current breakdown isn't as compatible with the Mastery-based passive talent-tree bonuses we want to add (see below). We'd rather spend time tweaking and balancing one good tanking tree rather than having a tank always wondering if they picked the "correct" tree out of three possibilities.

Blood seemed like the best fit for tanking. Unholy has always had a strong niche with diseases, magic, and command over pets. Frost now feels like a solid dual-wield tree with Frost magic damage and decent crowd control. Blood's niche was self-healing -- fitting for a tank -- as well as strong weapon swings, which could easily be migrated to Frost and Unholy.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Runic Power Generation: This will function as the name implies, and the new rune system will make generating Runic Power more appealing.

Unholy

Melee damage

Melee and spell critical damage

Disease Damage: Unholy death knights will be able to get more out of their diseases, which are integral to the tree's play style.

Vengeance

This new mechanic is designed to ensure that tank damage output (and therefore threat) doesn't fall behind as damage-dealing classes improve their gear during the course of the expansion. All tanking specs will have Vengeance as their second talent tree passive bonus. Whenever a tank gets hit, Vengeance will grant a stacking Attack Power buff equal to 5% of the damage done, up to a maximum of 10% of the character's unbuffed health. For boss encounters, we expect that tanks will always have an Attack Power bonus equal to 10% of their health. The 5% and 10% bonuses assume 51 talent points have been put into the Blood tree; these values will be smaller at lower levels.

You only get the Vengeance bonus if you have spent the most talent points in the Blood tree, so you won't see Frost or Unholy death knights running around with it. Vengeance will let us continue to design tank gear more or less the way we do today; there will be some damage-dealing stats, but mostly survival-oriented stats. Druids typically have more damage-dealing stats even on their tanking gear, so their Vengeance benefit may be smaller, but the goal is that all four tanks will do about the same damage when tanking.

We hope you enjoyed this preview, and we're looking forward to hearing your thoughts and feedback on these additions and changes. Please keep in mind that this information represents a work in progress and is subject to change as development on Cataclysm continues.